The Ranger (6 page)

Judge Blanton was a short, wiry man who probably didn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. But he’d had the reputation as being one of the toughest figures ever to sit on the circuit bench, later serving on the state supreme court before retiring. He’d been a Marine in Korea—seen lots of action at Chosin Reservoir—and had been a mentor to Quinn’s uncle. His skin sagged a bit from his chin, but he still kept that same white crew cut he’d had since forever.

Mr. Jim and Luther Varner walked out onto the front porch and waved to Quinn while Quinn shook the judge’s hand. All the men wore heavy jackets and boots and were drinking coffee and smoking cigars. Luther Varner, lanky and angular with long, bony fingers, handed Quinn one wrapped in cellophane, and Mr. Jim fiddled with an old Zippo to light it.

Mr. Jim kept a well-worn Bible under his arm, Quinn figuring he’d interrupted some kind of meeting between the men, a regular Saturday routine where they argued politics, religion, and women.

“Had a visit last night from Johnny Stagg,” Quinn said.

“What a pleasure,” Blanton said.

“He claims he owns my uncle’s land.”

Varner asked, “Can he back it up?”

Quinn unfolded the amateur document Stagg had given him, and Blanton pulled some reading glasses from his weathered plaid mackintosh jacket and read through the piece quickly, folding it and handing it back. The smoke on the porch was heavy but blew away with a sharp chill of wind.

“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I’ve seen shittier things than this hold up in court.”

Quinn nodded, getting the plug of the cigar going in the cold, adjusting his feet, as the judge looked up squinting into the white light.

“He could fight you for it,” Blanton said. “Even without a contract. Everyone knows your uncle played around with those machines like a kid in a sandbox.”

“Son of a bitch,” Mr. Jim said, settling his portly body into an old rocking chair and tugging down his Third Army ball cap over his bald head. “Y’all know about that deal?”

Blanton shook his head.

“Hell, he kept those bulldozers and backhoes at the farm. In exchange, Stagg said he’d let Hamp use ’em whenever he wanted. Hamp used ’em to dig that bass pond last summer, bulldozed a bunch of deer trails through the woods.”

Quinn said, “Stagg says my uncle rented them.”

“That’s a black lie,” Mr. Jim said, shaking his head, cigar clamped down in his teeth. “No other way to put it.”

“So these were just personal loans,” Quinn said. “Y’all know about some casino trips?”

Every one of the men nodded and mumbled but still kept on calling Stagg a son of a bitch for lying about the use of those earthmovers.

“He claims to have gone straight,” Quinn said. “Said he sold the truck stop and titty bar.”

Varner laughed and leaned against a support beam, smoking and coughing at the idea. Mr. Jim just shook his head, standing up from the chair for a brief moment and spitting over the railing before settling back down.

“Not long after you left,” Blanton said. “He sold that filthy place, but I have my doubts. Same ole place, with its backroom whores and card games. It may have exchanged officially, but I have the feeling he’s still got a piece of it.”

“And got himself elected. He’s running the county board of supervisors.”

“Everything in Tibbehah County is for sale,” Mr. Jim said. “Most folks who kept things straight are dead.”

“Or retired,” Blanton said.

“Well, I’m not handing it over,” Quinn said.

“You could get a decent price for the property,” Varner said. “It’s the land he wants, not trouble.”

“I’d rather burn the house and timber,” Quinn said.

Varner smiled and looked over to Mr. Jim, who cracked a grin, smoke leaking out from his old lips. He crossed his legs at the ankle and smiled with pride at Jason Colson’s kid, although the men had never really accepted Quinn’s father, always seeing him for what he’d become, a drunk who ruined about everything he touched.

“Want some coffee?” Blanton asked.

Quinn nodded, placing his smoldering cigar on a large ashtray, and followed Blanton to the back door of the old house and into the kitchen, where he had a pot of coffee plugged into the wall. Blanton poured them both a cup and headed into a sitting area filled with fine antiques, foxhunt paintings in oil on canvas, and an enormous old grandfather clock that ticked and whirred, filling the silence until the time changed to eight, clanging and gonging, then only the slow tick between them.

“So you’re going to stay awhile?”

“I got five more days.”

“Can I recommend a good lawyer?”

“I was thinking of you.”

“I’m retired.”

“But you’re the only one I trust.”

“I guess I could file a few things in town to keep Stagg off your property. Sooner or later this thing’ll end up in front of Purvis Reeves.”

“He’s the judge?”

“Even if Stagg hadn’t been the one who put him on the bench,” Blanton said, “Purvis’d likely look at both claims and seek to split the difference. That’s his idea of justice. I might could whittle Stagg down some, though. That I can promise you. Maybe you keep the house and a good hunk of the property. You’re apt to lose some road front, though.”

“I hate that bastard.”

“He’s not worth that,” Blanton said. “Hate’s too powerful an emotion to waste on turds.”

Quinn tested the coffee and it had cooled a bit. Blanton walked to the fire in the small chimney and poked at it, the air smelling of burning cedar, pleasant and warming on a cold, gray morning. He looked through the glass panes in the front door and watched his friends, sitting comfortably and smoking. “Don’t let that cigar go out on you.”

“Do you know what happened to my uncle?” Quinn asked.

Blanton placed the fire poker back into the metal rack and turned back to him.

“Lillie Virgil doesn’t believe he’d kill himself.”

“That little ole gal likes to create problems.”

“You must’ve seen him before it happened.”

“None of us had spoken to Hamp for nearly a month,” Blanton said. “He wouldn’t return our calls. If we stopped by the jail, he’d find something that needed to be done.”

“But you were his friend,” Quinn said, leaning in from his chair. “Just what was it that hit him so hard and fast?”

“This county,” Blanton said. “His job, the way most everything he’d known had been tainted and ruined. He’d become obsessed with taking the blame for things he couldn’t control. He was too old and too experienced to take his work so personally.”

“Is it that bad?” Quinn asked.

Blanton began to rebutton his mackintosh coat and motioned his head toward the porch. Quinn followed him to the front door, the daylight coming on strong but not seeming to break the brisk cold. Blanton put his arm around Quinn’s shoulder. “Do you know I have to sleep at night with my doors locked and a pistol under my pillow?”

“And two mean dogs.”

“Around here, I wish they were meaner,” Blanton said. “People will steal anything not chained down.”

He gripped Quinn’s shoulder and led him back to the front porch.

Outside, Mr. Jim handed him the cigar and his old Zippo to get the damn thing going again.

Lena didn’t get
to see the man called Charley Booth till Saturday morning, during what the acting sheriff called “family time” outside a chain-link fence where prisoners got to kiss through the wire and accept packages of food and cigarettes, some sly groping between the slots. A guard watched all the time, seeming to be more concerned about pot or pills than weapons. But Lena saw Jody right away, knowing it was him from the way he stood, too cool for everyone, smoking a cigarette, with shorter, spiky hair now, but looking skinnier and more pimply than when she’d known him in Alabama. He was talking to a black guy in a far corner, both laughing, Lena noticing for the first time a tattoo on the side of his neck and wondering just when he did that to himself.

She called for him. The tattoo was of a flower or a wolf head.

He turned to her but looked away as if he didn’t recognize her. She’d worn her best clothes, a sparkled Miley Cyrus matching outfit she’d bought at the Walmart outside Tuscaloosa where she’d stopped hitching for a day or two and spent her last forty dollars on a cheap motel. That’s where she’d learned Jody had left town for this nowhere spot called Jericho, Mississippi, and she’d had to make the choice whether to go back home or see the thing through, and that little kick in her stomach made that decision all the easier.

Jody finally got the idea that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him and bugged off the black guy and walked over to the fence separating them. She hung her hands up on the little diamond of wire and smiled at him, but he just shot her a glance and said in a low voice, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

She couldn’t answer, her voice seizing up in her throat.

“You need to get your ass back home, girl. I’ll call.”

“Hell you will.”

He looked away, and she noted the leanness of his jaw, his teeth looking looser and more askew in his mouth, almost as if he’d aged a decade in months. He rubbed his sweating neck and bristly beard on his skinny face. He spit onto the concrete and breathed hard out his nose.

“I have your baby in me.”

“How do I know it’s mine?”

“Goddamn you to hell, Jody.”

“Hush.”

“Just who the hell is Charley Booth?”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “Just go.”

“You don’t believe it’s yours?” she said. “You should know I come for you with a gun. Guess I don’t need it now you’re locked up.”

“You need to shut up.”

“Listen,” she said, reaching through the fence with her skinny fingers and grabbing his orange coveralls and pulling him close. “I don’t care what they say you done.”

“I ain’t done nothin’.”

“We’ll get through this. All of us.”

“Oh, hell.”

And she believed for a moment he was still speaking to her but then saw the glint in his eyes as he followed some movement behind her, back along the parking lot by the long, winding railroad tracks. She turned to see two men crawling out of an old black Camaro, both of them lighting up cigarettes, one of ’em as skinny as Jody and the other thick and muscular. They were dead-eyed, wearing T-shirts cut off at the shoulders and jeans so tight it was obscene.

“Who are those men?”

“Alpha dogs,” he said, moving away. “Go. Get lost. I don’t want you or that damn baby.”

“I thought you’d quit messing with all that shit? Jody? Listen to me.”

But he’d turned and walked up to the guard, who nodded him back inside out of the cold, where she was left shivering in a glittering shirt and ruffled dress that hugged her expanding butt. As she backed up, the sadness feeling like an animal clawing her chest, she passed by the two men. Her eyes met with the thicker of the two, black-eyed and scruffy-faced, with hollow cheeks and corded animal muscle on his skinny frame. His hair was buzzed down to the scalp, and the T-shirt he wore had the U.S. Capitol on it topped with a Rebel flag and read I HAVE A DREAM, TOO. The man eyed her and tugged at himself between his legs, smiling at the other, leaving her with his sharp odor lingering long after he’d moved away. On the back of his neck was a tattoo similar to Jody’s, a crude—almost childlike—image.

He flicked his cigarette into the weeds and called out to the guard to get Charley Booth’s ass out there.

She froze, and he turned back to stare, licking his cracked lips.

Lena ran for the tracks and followed them till she was back in town, broke, busted, and nowhere to go.

“Honey?” Jean Colson said.
“I said cream of mushroom. Not chicken noodle.”

Quinn’s mind had drifted as he followed that shopping cart up and down the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly, nodding to what his mother was saying but not hearing half of it.

“Quinn?”

Jean Colson looked at Quinn as if he were still a twelve-year-old boy who’d get a quarter for the bubble-gum machine if he didn’t act up. Caddy’s baby sat up high and attentive in the cart, trying to reach for everything they passed.

“Wasn’t there,” he said.

“Look again.”

“Didn’t you go to the store last night?”

“This for Sunday,” she said. “We got some folks comin’ over after church. People want to see you, honey. There’s going to be a ceremony. You got to feed those people who are coming.”

“I’d rather have catfish.”

“We’ll go to Pap’s before you leave.”

“Who are all these people anyway?”

“Friends.”

“You look. It’s not there.”

She handed over the grocery cart with a huff. Jason held on to a box of animal crackers as Quinn headed down aisle 8, cake mixes and spices and syrups and things. He stopped to pick up some Aunt Jemima pancake mix, his momma never having breakfast food, and was thinking that a pound of good coffee would be nice when he spotted Lillie Virgil striding down the aisle, one hand on her gun, lithe and hard in a tan uniform, until she reached the cart and grabbed hold of it in midroll. She smiled at Jason and called to him, tickling his chin with fingers and talking baby talk, telling him he sure was a handsome boy, before lifting her eyes at Quinn and asking, “You think your momma will let you out tonight?”

“Come again?”

“There’s someone you need to talk to. Says he’ll only talk to you.”

“I can’t right now. Can’t you see I’m grocery shopping? We have people coming over after church and you need some cream of shit to make the casserole.”

“He sure is cute.” She leaned in again, face softening, and said, “I’ll pick you up.”

“What’s this about?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m not hearing a lot of what you’re telling me.”

“Good soldier, believing what you’re told.”

“What time?”

“Give me thirty minutes,” she said. “I got to change out of this uniform.”

Quinn smiled at her. “Don’t get yourself in deep on my account.”

“Who said I’m doing this for you?”

Quinn kept pushing the cart, running his hand over his clipped hair, Jason growing upset because the last animal cracker was gone. He searched down the aisle of flour and spices, the kid now crying like crazy, till he was able to make it three rows over to the cereal aisle.